In view of the ever-growing demand for telephony services, the competition amongst providers of these services becomes more and more fierce. This is particularly true with regard to the cellular phone companies, which virtually fight for every additional customer, e.g. by offering various kinds of benefits, besides cutting their prices as low as possible and thus trying to expand the time we use their services beyond the regular calling time.
An attempt to maximize the revenue of the communication providers has been in the form of injecting advertising announcements during the process of establishing the connection between the calling party and the called party, mostly on the background of the ring back tone signal (cf. U.S. Pat. No. 6,603,844).
A further step in this direction has been to customize as far as possible the content of the advertisement to the actual calling party. This was accomplished by tracing, e.g. the social economic or demographic background of customers by identifying their residence area reflected by their subscriber number (which is necessarily stored in the provider's databank for billing purposes).
Other parameters used in this connection were time and dates of the calls, and/or details associated with the destination of the call which might reflect back on the calling party characteristics.
Obviously, the success of the method could only be measured in statistical terms.
It should be stated that currently, advertisers are able to advertise the same advertisement only on a single platform namely television, radio, Internet, phone, billboards, newspapers, verbally etc., but not simultaneously.
The rather recent implementation of hybrid devices, supporting both audio and video, has opened new horizons regarding the customization of ads more accurately and efficiently, as will be exemplified below. These devices include, but not limited to, personal computers, PDA's, Blackberry and hand-held computers.
Moreover, since these devices involve the use of the internet in several configurations, namely wired or wireless, new and diverse communication methods were introduced. Under this category, the use of the Voice Over Internet Protocol technology has drastically increased.
Accordingly, more companies offer VOIP communication services, at relatively more attractive rates.
A typical VOIP system is outlined in FIG. 1, which is self-explanatory.
On this background, it is the prime object of the present invention to offer to the commercial advertising enterprises a new, customized multiple media platform system that will allow the use of a combined audio and web campaigns (video, image, and so forth), in combination with state of the art communication services.
Unless otherwise defined, all technical and/or scientific terms used herein have the same meaning as commonly understood by one of ordinary skill in the art to which the invention pertains. Although methods and materials similar or equivalent to those described herein can be used in the practice or testing of embodiments of the invention, exemplary methods and/or materials are described below. In case of conflict, the patent specification, including definitions, will prevail. In addition, the materials, methods, and examples are illustrative only and are not intended to be necessarily limiting.
The terms “comprises”, “comprising”, “includes”, “including”, “having” and their conjugates mean “including but not limited to”.
The term “consisting of” means “including and limited to”.
The term “consisting essentially of” means that the composition, method or structure may include additional ingredients, steps and/or parts, but only if the additional ingredients, steps and/or parts do not materially alter the basic and novel characteristics of the claimed composition, method or structure.
As used herein, the singular form “a”, “an” and “the” include plural references unless the context clearly dictates otherwise.